Back in August, it was my girlfriend, Amanda's, birthday. My gift to her was her first euro trip to London and Paris. While I'm a wedding cinematographer, my whole summer is usually booked with work and the next couple of weeks I had free wasn't until October so this was when I bought us the tickets to go.

Amanda at Tower Bridge

Canon 6D, Canon 50mm f/1.4 (iso50, f/1.8, 1/4000s)

Our first full day in London, we went down to Tower Bridge since it was close to our hotel. As expected in the daytime it's full of tourists so its really hard to take photos. The shot of Amanda took forever to wait for the 2 second window where no one else was in the frame.

I also took some photos on the bridge itself and saw a shot that had potential but I had to go back at night for. The following night we headed back to the bridge where I was able to get this shot. I strapped a Gorillapod to one of the dividers for a long exposure. The photo looks HDR but it wasn't. I did some slight adjustments but this was generally how the lighting looked.

Tower Bridge

Canon 6D, Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L (iso200, f/5.6, 6s)

Our hotel was in a super busy part of London, but as soon as you turn down a side street the whole aura changes. Avenues full of people, busy stores, tall buildings, and double decker buses turn into desolate narrow brick roads with vintage cars parked on them. This was right around the corner from our hotel so we shot a few photos here before heading out one morning.

Canon 6D, Canon 85mm f/1.8 (iso100, f/2.2, 1/200s)

Canon 6D, Canon 85mm f/1.8 (iso100, f/2.2, 1/320s)

A photo Amanda shot of me with the Morris Minor

Canon 6D, Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 (iso6400, f/5.6, 1/250s)

One of Amandas goals for this trip was to get a photo in a classic London phone booth. We actually went to Big Ben the first two days in a row and the third day we looked all over for a phone booth to get a few shots in but they were hard to find. After walking around for a while we ended up on the other side of the House of Westminster and Big Ben and there were phone booths left and right that we just missed the other days we were there.

Canon 6D, Canon 50mm f/1.4 (iso160, f/1.4, 1/200s)

Canon 6D, Canon 50mm f/1.4 (iso160, f/1.4, 1/2500s)

Me, trapped inside a phone booth

Canon 6D, Canon 50mm f/1.4 (iso 160, f/2, 1/80s)

Big Ben and the London Eye in the same shot

Canon 6D, Canon 50mm f/1.4 (iso200, f/8, 10s)

There will be a part 2 to this blog about the Paris portion of this trip with a lot more photos!